This summary is based on the panel discussion “Open Source and Academic Collaboration: How OSPOs Make It Work” recorded at an Open Source Summit. This panel continued a discussion started at a previous OSSummit, and the group hoped to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities for university–industry collaboration around open source.
Motivations from Industry
Leslie Hawthorne of Red Hat explained that her company has a long history of working with academic institutions on open-source projects because it helps with talent development and product adoption. She described Red Hat’s goal of getting students excited about open source early on:
“I get to do a lot of really cool stuff with open source projects, including things like collaborating with various academic institutions.” From an industry perspective, hiring students who already contribute to open source makes onboarding easier: “We are a software engineering organization.
We would like to hire intelligent, competent people. If they’re already working in open source projects, obviously it’s easier.”
Cornelius Schumacher, open source steward at Deutsche Bahn’s IT arm, said that open source is not the company’s core business but a means to an end: “We invest in collaboration, open source is for us a means to an end; we are in the business of making trains run.” Their motivation for partnering with universities is to advance research and logistics; open source provides an effective way to collaborate on software when needed.
Motivations from Academia
Ying Wang, Technology and Licensing Manager at ETH Zurich, described how their academic OSPO started by surveying researchers and students across disciplines. The group learned that university interests—“freedom of publication, validation of the data and the results by peers”—align well with open-source values. At the same time, universities need funding and job prospects for students, while companies need skilled contributors; hence, collaboration can serve both sides. She also noted that universities face unique hurdles when contributing to corporate open-source projects because contributor licence agreements (CLAs) often require signatures from the entire institution—something impractical for large universities. She suggested companies provide flexible CLA options.
Chris Hoeppler of the Bosch OSPO added that universities now need more than publication rights; they must share code and data: “OSPOs help people figure out those different aspects and the different needs of both sides.” Open collaboration and reproducibility have become expectations. He cautioned that publicly funded projects should not end with a code dump: “We don’t just want a code drop after three years of a publicly funded project; you want an open source project.”
Claire Dillon**, community lead at CURIOSS network of academic OSPOs, highlighted three reasons companies invest in open source partnerships with universities:
- Speed: Companies sometimes need results quickly; negotiating intellectual property (IP) can slow down collaboration. Claire observed that open source “can be quicker because that pathway is established.”
- Multiple universities: When several universities are involved, negotiating individual IP agreements becomes nearly impossible. “If you’re doing it with multiple universities then open source is pretty much the only way to go because otherwise you’re just going to be mired down in the negotiations.”
- Sustainable research: Corporations are experimenting with funding projects tied to interns or student coursework so the projects continue beyond the grant period. This allows “a pathway to get more people contributing to it and maintaining it over time.”
She also argued that open source can make research translation more efficient and that universities need to be educated about this: “There’s loads of opportunity space for research impact in this open-source space.”
Overview of Challenges Discussed
Ana Jiménez, Project Manager at the Linux Foundation’s TODO Group, grounded the discussion with findings from a recent interview-based study of 12 academic OSPOs. She highlighted recurring barriers in academia: decentralized structures that make it hard to reach researchers, low awareness of OSPOs, incentive systems that prioritize publications over open source, resistance among faculty to maintain projects, cultural gaps with industry, and licensing frameworks not well aligned with academic practices. These research-backed insights resonated with the panel and set the stage for a deeper dive into specific challenges:
- Intellectual property and CLAs: Both universities and large corporations struggle with contributor licence agreements that require signatures from entire institutions. Cornelius sympathised with Ying, noting: “In a large corporation with many different legal entities worldwide, we have the same problem.”
- Cultural and organisational change: Developing an open-source culture is a challenge in itself. The panel described open source not merely as a licence but as a collaboration framework and a culture. Cornelius called it “also the culture … establishing this … can be a big opportunity.”
- Curriculum reform: Leslie recounted that in 2010, the US National Science Foundation required grant recipients to publish their source code, yet universities still resist teaching open source. She explained that changing the curriculum is hard because “professors are not incentivized to update their curriculum; they are incentivized to publish.”
- Competition for curriculum space: Claire added that universities prioritise many topics, including AI, so open source competes for attention. The lever to drive change is industry demand: “If we want to make that change happen, it has to be industry saying: I need people graduating with open source skills, please.”
Opportunities for the Future
- Culture building and cross-disciplinary participation: Leslie argued that open source teaches collaboration across borders and languages. She urged the community to teach open-source culture to the next generation because it provides a model for working together despite political divisions: “We don’t have to agree about everything, but we can agree to build something beautiful together.” Claire noted that open source is appealing beyond computer science: “It’s not just techies, you get the humanities and the health science people and people doing history and geography. You get them understanding open source and contributing.”
- Flexible collaboration frameworks: The panel encouraged governments and funding bodies to embrace open source for publicly funded projects. Chris pointed out that governments sometimes lack clarity on what to expect from open-source proposals, and foundations can help set up governance and infrastructure.
- New funding models: Several speakers mentioned grant schemes where companies and governments co-fund projects. Claire said matching-fund programmes exist where corporations invest in research and governments provide additional funding, allowing efficient collaboration.
- Concrete success stories: In closing, the panel referenced a current Horizon 2020 project involving the German Ministry of Climate Protection, Red Hat, and Deutsche Bahn to build functionally safe Linux for train cars. They used it as evidence that “open source is the answer” for complex, multi-stakeholder collaborations.